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Opensource drivers with mesa 9.x? Have fun with that. You would be more recent just adding the xorg repo to your normal 13.1 install, which doesn't support tumbleweed.

Rolling release is not about having the most recent... It's about getting updates from time to time per package do not have to do a full upgrade every x months. If you want the most recent stuff add the factory repositories.

Tumbleweed isn't a true rolling release because its just a addon repository to your 13.1 opensuse distro. Its like adding a ppa to ubuntu and calling it a rolling release. For example 4 days after 13.1 came out installed it and switched to tumbleweed, there was nothing in it at that time. Then they started adding a package here and there, but it was always based on 13.1, just a few updates.

Which brings me to what a "true" rolling release is, a true RR isn't based on adding updates to a normal release distro. Because if you do that you are constrained by the limits of the release plan of the point distro or risk changing so many packages that you loose compatibility and essentially become a fork because it becomes too hard to backport the changes of their next point release. For example even Debian Sid only contains gnome 3.8, yet its meant to be unstable, i.e. rather bleeding edge. Thats because its constrained by the release cycle of stable debian.

A true RR also doesn't release packages as update packs every few months, which if you think about it is just a shorter release cycle than a normal distro. A true RR adds packages as they come in from upstream on their own merits, i.e. stable enough or not, integrated in distro or not. If f.e. systemd releases a new version and its compiling/running fine it gets added, same for kernel, DEs or browsers. Packages don't wait on each other as there is no concept of packages belonging together besides actual dependencies. These distros also tend to have a really tiny base system, and no "default" package sets for desktop users since the versions and dependencies in the repositories tend to change so fast that its safer and cleaner to calculate them anew for every installation.

If a rolling release distro adds unstable stuff they're doing it wrong. That's the point of a rolling release distro, to have continous updates of stable releases. See first answer.

At the end of the day, normal distros are pictures that get redrawn every release, while RR distros tend to be puzzles where you get each piece redrawn and replaced individually. Things like Tumbleweed or even LMDE only focus on a part of the picture and replace that again and again. Besides that I guess the main difference is in the mindset that goes into choosing which package gets updated when, or even wether it gets updated at all.

I'm not saying that openSUSE Tumbleweed does the same as Arch or others do, but that doesn't mean it's not a rolling release distro.

By default openSUSE, and most of its derivatives, are not rolling releases since openSUSE has stable fixed releases and developmental milestone releases, as well as a development branch and testing repository called 'Factory'. However, openSUSE and compatible derivatives become rolling releases when pointed at the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling repository instead of the default repository.

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Rolling release is not about having the most recent... It's about getting updates from time to time per package do not have to do a full upgrade every x months. If you want the most recent stuff add the factory repositories.

Same answer as above.

If a rolling release distro adds unstable stuff they're doing it wrong. That's the point of a rolling release distro, to have continous updates of stable releases. See first answer.

I'm not saying that openSUSE Tumbleweed does the same as Arch or others do, but that doesn't mean it's not a rolling release distro.

Sorry but did you really understand what we are talking about? Tumbleweed isn't even a distro, it's a update repository to Suse. The problem isn't even that it doesn't offer new versions of Mesa, KDE, gnome, grub etc, it doesn't contain them at all.

Also the stability of updates doesn't even come into it, not every distro aims to be rock stable. But at the very least a RR should contain all packages needed to built a distro and have them roll in some manner, and Tumbleweed just doesn't. It doesn't even contain packages intended for the next Suse version, that's factory. Which is also why you can't remove your current 13.1 repositories when using it. Cause that's where most of your packages come from.

Calling a package repository like Tumbleweed a RR distro, or even just a distro, is just plain rude to all the people doing work on actual distros. Cause there is more to running a distro than updating a few packages.

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It's not a single repository and I have no repository that's saying "13.1":

I don't have to change my repositories to get the new stuff (well virtualbox from time to time, but it's not an official one) and I've done this for years now.

The opensuse:stable stuff are symlinks to the most recent repos, i.e. 13.1. The real update to your system happens when that changes from 13.1 to 13.2. Its like having stable instead of wheezy on a debian system in the sources.list.

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Well of course does the system break if you remove essential repositories. That's not my point. My point is that I don't have to do anything other then to run regularly updates to get news stuff. The stuff that is not in the Tumbleweed repos gets updated less often, but it gets updated without me doing anything (but running updates) -> rolling.
For the end user there's no difference if the packages in the repository and the symlink to the real repository changes. All I see is updates to packages.
This is different to what is Arch is doing, but the result is the same!

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What if they would simply copy over all the missing packages to the rumbleweed repository? Would it become a true rolling release?

To your former post, that's the same as putting stable instead of wheezy in Debian sources.list, and I think we both agree Debian stable isn't a Rolling release.

And yes, if you added the missing packages Tumbleweed would be a rolling release distro. But there is a reason they are missing. Namely the difference between running a repository with low dependency stuff and running a distribution channel like the 13.1 branch or factory. Switching the kernel up a few versions or backporting even the whole of gnome from factory/obs isn't that work intensive, add x11, Mesa and the entire base system to that... The workload is magnitudes greater as there are many more permutations to test.

If making a rolling release was easy we would see more of them, arch is popular after all, but I think it's pretty much a either or thing. You either have controlled cycle with beta versions, freezes or you do it the arch way. They are mutually exclusive as far as I can see.

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Ok. Lets leave it at this point. I agree Arch and Tumbleweed do it differently, but I still think the outcome for the user is the same and I think neither of us will switch positions

Fair enough, though i still get nervous tick in my eyelid when i hear you comparing Arch and Tumbleweed like that . Though i do agree that the superficial outcome is very similar to an enduser in the long run.

Really my only issue with tumbleweed was that it breaks package dependancies with repositaries intended for 13.1, like the one from X11 giving you recent mesa or the one from nvidia giving you nvidia drivers. I either need Mesa for my HD4000 integrated or i need Nvidia for my Geforce. Sadly Nouveau leads to heavy graphical corruption after about 15min that can only be fixed by rebooting, while mesa 9 means i can't play games since its just too slow compared to recent mesa versions .

I heard though that opensuse is working on making the Factory repository stable enough to use it directly, which would be very interesting. Won't help with external repos though i guess, Arch fixes that b having stuff like nvidia drivers in the main repo, something opensuse won't do due to license issues.